Saturday, April 1, 2017

We're launching the ninth annual Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday with work from Matthew Rohrer.

I first reached out to Matthew after Bianca Stone (whose own tattoo was featured here) recommended I check him out. This was more than five years ago and we were finally able to assemble a post this year with a rather relevant tattoo and poem for 2017.

Here's one of Matthew's tattoos:

Matthew explains:

“I had this done on my birthday at Hand of Glory (@handofglorytattoo) in Brooklyn. It’s the 'anti-fascist circle' or the Iron Front Circle. People drew it over official swastikas in Germany in the 30s before the group was destroyed by the Nazis. The original design was done by a guy who was the lab assistant to Pavlov. The 3 arrows are supposedly the 3 pillars of anti-fascism….but accounts vary about what those 3 pillars really are.

I wanted to mark myself as unacceptable to these motherfuckers and so this was my birthday present to myself.”

The artist at Hand of Glory that inked this was Jim Gentry (@gentrytattoos).

Appropriately, he offered up the following poem:

POST ELECTION

Thanksgiving morning the xmas trees

at Greg’s Quality Xmas Trees

are bound and gagged

I drive by in the rain

I feel like a hundred bucks

I crest the hill

a couple miles from the sea

wipers scrape and jump

the pumpkin pie sends me a text

Where are you?

I’m coming, I’m on my way

I have to change lanes

here on Ditmas avenue

everyone wants to turn right

the whole fucking country!

~ ~ ~

Matthew Rohrer is the author of several books, most recently THE OTHERS, published by Wave Books in spring 2017. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing at NYU.

Thanks to Matthew for helping us launch our ninth season of tattooed poets on Tattoosday!

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